Today I want to talk to you about the democratization of development. Most of the time in a church, we see the leader/apprentice model. This model is one-to-one, which is good when we’re talking about intentional development. However, I would say, why don’t we have a democratization of development? Why don’t we try to develop multiple people in a given ministry?
Let’s look at the example of a small group. There are probably 10-12 people in the small group, which is great. But within that group, I’m not just trying to develop one apprentice and bring them into leadership. I want to democratize leadership. So I’m going to give people roles like host or hospitality. I also want someone in charge of care and prayer, someone in charge of our special events, and someone in charge of our outreach.
In giving people a role, I’m inviting them into the first step of leadership. I’m not putting the full onus of apprenticeship on them. I’m giving them an opportunity to eventually become a leader themselves. What I’m also asking them to do and creating the expectation of is that they are also reaching out to the other people in our small group to reproduce themselves in their role as well. That is the democratization of development.
That means everyone considers it their job to identify, recruit, and develop people to replace the ministry that they’re currently doing. This is vitally important to the health and growth of the church and the impact our churches can have in our community.
Now that you have this very scalable framework, what are you going to do about it?
To learn more about creating a recruiting culture at all levels of your church’s leadership pipeline, join us at Pipeline 2018: Recruit, Develop, Repeat. For information and to register, click here.
